SAGINAW, MI — The top of Elizabeth Taybron's skull, the white bone blotched red with blood and a two- to three-inch bullet hole visible, filled the screen of a large TV in Saginaw County Circuit Judge Darnell Jackson's courtroom Friday morning.

It was one of the last images the jury saw before beginning deliberations about 11:30 a.m. Friday in the murder trial of Donte R. Houston, 20, who is accused of shooting the bullet that unintentionally struck Taybron near a party store at the corner of Webber and Maplewood in Saginaw on June 12, 2010.

The last image was of Taybron wearing a white dress, smiling and holding a bouquet of flowers on her daughter's wedding day, in a photo taken before she was shot, before she lost har ability to walk and talk.

Prosecutors claim Houston opened fire after an altercation with Duran Lowe, also known as "Lil' Man."

"He left and came back with a gun, waited and shot at Duran Lowe and missed and hit Mrs. Taybron in the head," Saginaw County Assistant Prosecutor George Best argued in his closing.

Taybron had been walking more than a block to the west on Webber.

"Skull fragments were driven" into Taybron's brain, said Best, and because of brain damage, Taybron never spoke or walked again.

He determined her death as a combination of the gunshot wound and a "serious state of emphysema."

Houston's defense attorney Jeffrey J. Rupp said Houston fled the scene when gunfire erupted but never fired a gun. He then concentrated on whether Taybron's death was a direct result of her injury.

Rupp presented 1,900 pages in medical records as evidence and argued that Virani "seems to be completely unaware" of much of the contents.

Taybron's doctor said as of Nov. 30, 2010 that Taybron had made "excellent progress," Rupp said.

Elizabeth Taybron

On Dec. 1, "she pulls out the tracheostomy" tube and is transferred to intensive care in "grave condition," said Rupp, adding that this was the "significant intervening event" that led to her death, not the bullet wound.

"I'm not arguing that she was ever going to be the way she was" before the gunshot injury, Rupp said, but "that gunshot did not kill her; pulling the tracheostomy out did.

"This is not a homicide and you should return a verdict of 'not guilty,'" Rupp urged the jury.

Houston, who wore gray pants and white shirt with a bandage on his chin Friday, is charged with an open count of murder and five other felonies in Taybron's death.

Taybron was a mother, grandmother and great-grandmother.

"Nobody has a promise of how long we're going to be here," Best said to the jury. "But nobody has the right to shoot at us."